Swiping your card at a restaurant? Be cautious as your pin might be tracked

After demonetisation rocked India, most of our transactions have been going through card payment or net banking. We have heard cases of e-banking fraud and how our money is not exactly safe online. This could prove risky for our ATM/debit cards as well.

Waiters note down your pin and pass it on to thieves

Recently, Bandra police have come across a group of thieves who target people making a card payment at restaurants. Apparently, when a person punches in the pin on the card skimmer, the waiter notes the password down and gives it to this bunch of thieves and the waiter gets 1k per swipe. Waiters earn around 50k a month by providing this information. This information was then passed on to a person named ‘Mushraf Sayyed’ and he then used the information to re-write data on a dummy card to withdraw money.

This scam was being allegedly run at Bandra’s Persian Darbar and Andheri’s Metro bar and restaurant. Three cases at the former and eight cases at the latter were noted.

After Bandra police uncovered the truth and nabbed these thieves, they were astonished to find data of around 90 banks and 1500 customers.

Skimmer machine

On swiping your card on this device, it is possible that the magnetic data on your card could get saved there. One can re-write this data on another dummy card and this is a big reason to worry.